Facilitating Transition of Students from GCSE to A-Level Mathematics

What is the source?

• Farzana Aslam, Facilitating Transition of Students From GCSE to A-Level Mathematics, MA Conference 2012, Keele, 11 April 2012.

What's the big idea?

Following a research project at a school in Coventry we recommend setting holiday work to review GCSE, set regular homework and mark all of it, do more practice exam questions and track progress closely.

What is their background?

Dr F Aslam Senior Lecturer, Department of Math and Control Eng Cov Uni
Again, keep it brief. Who is the author? Do they speak on behalf of a school, university or business? Provide links to media and web pages. Up to 140 characters, please.

What are they saying?

Outline:

1. Intro
2. Research
3. Recommendations
4. Enrichment
5. Bridging the Gap: Applications

Problem:

Only 67% of A grade GCSE students achieved between A and C at A level in 1994 (Wiliam, D et al, 1999)

What factors that might underlie why students struggle:

• Schools that do well 'over-teach' content at KS4 - it's deeper - Steve Abbott
• Going beyond what is strictly necessary for the exam - Steve Abbott
• Focus of high quality teaching and intervention at the C/D borderline
• Gaps in algebraic fluency
• Fractions and negative numbers
• Early entry means some learners have spent year 11 doing statistics,
• Understanding of concepts, not procedural regurgitation
• Assessments are high-stakes so schools have an incentive to hot-house and spoon-feed
• A jump in expectations
• Teacher confidence and subject knowledge
• Lots of support available for GCSE can cause over-reliance
• Absenteeism and staff turnover

The four research hypotheses we looked at were:

1. GCSE maths has not prepared students for A-level
2. Students are not motivated
3. Insufficient assesment strategies
4. Teaching at A-level is insufficient in quality and quantity

A study was carried out at Finham Park School, Coventy:

• observations
• questionnaire
• collecing assessment data
• interview

Results and analysis - observations:

Is the quality of teaching sufficient?

• teachers use a wide selection of resources
• teaching was generally judged to be what OFSTED would rate 'good'
• teachers would like to encourage deeper understanding, but GCSE content was often forgotten, so a lot of A-level teaching time was spent in review
• teachers fell behind on the syllabus so some new material was rushed

Recommendations:

• Within the holidays give students a book that entails all of the GCSE material that will be used in the following term. They should complete this over the summer.
• Increase the level of interaction between teacher and learner: maybe use thumbs up/down
• Set homework every lesson, mark it and record it on a spreadheet

Results and analysis - questionnaire:

students self rated
students struggles with putting different methods together to solve more complicated problems
"more examples of past paper questions and exam techniques"
"how to relate exam quesitons to knowledge learned"
"work through topics quicker"
"going over work in more detail"
"after school sessions and extra lessons"
Resource GCSE revision for A level mathematics
"Asking students what will make their mathematics teaching better may not be effective as they may never have seen good mathematics teaching." Steve Abbott
Comparisons of expected mock results and actual mock results
Question level analysis suggests that they did well on new topics: integration
Questions on indices and graph transformations covered at GCSE were much less successful
Indices and graph transformations are typically taught appallingly badly at GCSE. - Steve Abbott

Where can I learn more?

If you have any suitable links to related texts, web sites or other sources, put them here.

What next?

Explain what relevance this has to us:

• How will this change your practice?
• What do you or we need to do differently to make use of this idea?
• How will it improve learning?

Pay particular attention to the last question: if you can't see how it improves learning, say so.